


Long Time No See

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [280]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blind Date, M/M, Penetrative Sex, Reunions, World's Worst Blind Date, the one that got away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-03 01:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: I am here, Tony told himself and his second gin martini,under duress.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: We had one really bad date and never spoke again and now our friends have set us up on a blind date. Prompt from this [generator](https://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).
> 
> And if you are new to the Mental Mimosa series, I strongly suggest you read an important note about how MM works [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1012767).

_I am here_ , Tony told himself and his second gin martini, _under duress_. 

Honestly, though, he was there because he was a damn fool.

Inventing the internet’s favorite dating app was one thing-- _Tinder_ _with a heart_ , CNET called it; Gizmodo’s headline: _Get laid without losing your soul_ ; to Autostraddle, it was _One click, one love, one fuck_ \--but having your supposed friends and colleagues yell _physician, heal thyself_ and set up an account on your behalf? That was some whole other bullshit entirely.

Especially since they wouldn’t let him see the guy they’d hooked him up with. Or even tell Tony his name.

Nope, all Nat and Rhodes would cough up was be at this table in this bar on this day and this time and so here he was, people pleaser extraordinaire, not one to back down from a dare, parked in the requisite spot. Just to be obstinate, he’d gotten there twenty minutes early and immediately started a tab. Even billionaire genius would-be playboys need a little extra courage now and then.

And when then was his first blind date in, oh, seven years, yeah, he’d need gin now and later.

He sat back a little and scanned the Wednesday night crowd. It was still pretty thin, though things were getting more interesting the closer the clock crept towards the appointed hour, towards eight. There was a cute couple nesting on the barstools farthest away from the door, her arm around his back and his curled over her shoulders; they’d barely stopped banging lips long enough to take a sip. There was a group of older guys at a table near the center of the room, their bald heads and silver crowns lit up by the low-hanging lamp. They’d been in place when Tony arrived, but only now was the beer sinking in, apparently, because the whole lot of them had their heads thrown back with a laugh. Vets, maybe, Tony thought, or old boys from the factory floor; whoever they were, they were having a rip-roaring time.

And then there were the smattering of butterflies around the room, a younger crowd whose eyes roamed from their phone to the door and back again. Waiting for someone. Someone they didn’t know, maybe. Just like him.

He took another sip and spun a story where they were all avid users of _Faen,_ the kind of people who used the app in the shower and on the subway and snuck a peek while in meetings, all of them rolling, scrolling, sexting in hopes of finding just the right One--for tonight. These lovely humans, he told himself, and all the other millions like them were the reason why he now had a house in Edinburgh and another in Fiji and that charming cottage parked on top of a high rise in downtown LA. They were the reason why the media now treated him as a relationship guru, a knowledgeable figure when it came down to the matters--all that really matters in life--of sex and, meh, maybe love. They were the reason why the zeitgeist was for people to discuss their preferred means of orgasm in the first five minutes of the date and to be somewhere at least semi-private within 30. They were the reason that _Faen_ was now a verb, like Google and Facebook before it, the reason that some bars now had NO FAENING signs on their bathrooms, their storerooms--hell, anywhere where there were enough shadows to pretend that you and your date were alone. 

And according to some--the kinds of pundits that Tony made a point to send flowers to-- _Faen_ was the reason that America’s T&A discourse had made a hard turn into sex-as-consent, as good-natured negotiation, as the sort of topic that was best discussed with the lights on and in public (right) before anyone shed any clothes. His app hadn’t created the moment, but it had capitalized on it, and now after five years and several billion in sales, _Faen_ was, in Page Six’s words, _The Biggest F*cking Thing._

He raised his eyebrows at the waiter and then peered at his watch. Five minutes to go. No doubt whoever Nat and Rhodey had picked out for him would be the type to be exactly on time.

If the guy was quick enough with his drink, he could down half the sucker before then.

The funny part was--well, it was the kind of thing that was only funny in retrospect. Like, multiple years out in the distance. Probably be even better after several fucking millenia. It was this:

 _Faen_ had been spawned from his brilliant imagination (true), just like he told every interviewer, but its actual genesis, its primordial ooze? That had been the world’s worst ever blind date. Worst because the guy had been right down Tony’s alley: hot and broad with a face that the gods would have paid for--and, unfortunately, an equally good-looking ex. An ex who’d showed up in the middle of the entree, pulled up on a Harley out front, and stormed in like _Butterfield’s_ was the Alamo or something and--no, no, wait for it--gotten down on one fucking knee. In the middle of Tony’s blind date.

Never mind that Tony had already been measuring the metaphorical curtains, been ranking sex positions in order of _I must have it now_ and determining the shortest route from their table to the nearest cab and then back, so beautifully, speedily back, to his place, to his bed. Or the kitchen table. He hadn’t quite sorted out that.

Never mind that the guy--Steve, ah. Dreamy, agate-eyed Steve--had been into him, too. He hadn’t been imagining that. Not with Steve’s hand brushing his every time he reached for the wine; not with the guy’s big, booming laugh when Tony said something wildly inappropriate and his sneaky, dirty little grin. No, there was totally chemistry, whiz bang Flash Gordon stuff, and if they’d left after ten minutes of talking like Tony’s dick had been demanding, then the night, the rest of his life--hell, all of that shit would have been roses.

But they hadn’t because you didn’t do that, drag off a guy who you’d made reservations for, a guy who’d just ordered a steak. No, you were supposed to bide your time and throb for three courses and coffee. Then you could take the boy home and get fucked.

But then, the guy’s recalcitrant, smoking hot ex wasn’t supposed to crash your date, either, wasn’t supposed to bust in in black leather and a pained, lovesick expression all the while clutching (gulp) a big ring.

And your date--Steve, the magnificent, forever unfuckable Steve--wasn’t supposed to tear up and say _Yes_!, leaving you alone with the check and the whole restaurant applauding and you left holding half a bottle of wine and a perfect, untouched fucking steak.

Worst blind date in all of goddamn history. That’s what Tony’d dubbed it the next morning when Rhodey pulled him free of an empty bottle of whiskey and a _Golden Girls_ marathon.

“Tony,” Rhodey had said with infinite patience the third time Tony broke down, “think about this for a second. It was one date. Half of one, ok. You knew the guy thirty-some minutes. What are the odds--on a cosmic scale, I’m talking--that he’d have been anything to you but a good fuck?”

Tony’d made a face at him from the floor, the place where he’d decided he was perfectly happy to stay. “A good fuck, he says sneering, like, oh, what, that’s not enough?”

“It would’ve been enough for the night, at least. But I know you, man. Deny it all you want to but you’re looking for more than just a bird in the hand.”

“What’s that mean, a bird in the hand? Never got that one. Who goes around fisting birds?”

“Ok, no,” Rhodey’d said, holding up a hand. “Stop right there. Forget the metaphor and stick to the meaning, Tone: what you really want out of this life is a life with a good man.”

“No,” Tony said muddily, moodily. “I just want to have a good time, ‘kay, one night at a fucking time.”

It had taken a few months, but from that conversation, that one god awful date, the whole forest that was now _Faen_ had grown, and sometimes, when he was drinking scotch instead of cheap sweet tea vodka, Tony thought: I should find that guy and thank him, huh? Send him a beer coozie or something, because without him, where would I be? 

(And then, when he’d made the invariable switch over fresh ice cubes, he’d think about the guy again, far more puriently. That big body beneath him, or arched over him, gasping. Those wine-tinted lips on his dick.)

He shook his glass now, back in the present, one minute left on the clock, and drowned that particular thought in the taste of olives and ice.

He hoped Steve and his hot motorcycle man were doing awesome, wherever they were. Probably they were out in one of the boroughs where the leather guy could strip his bike in the driveway and Steve could sit on the stoop in the summer sun and sketch the afternoon away.

Steve liked to draw, was good at it, too. Tony had never forgotten that. Maybe because he still had the grocery receipt Steve had plucked from his pocket and handed over, shyly: a little sketch he’d done on the bus.

“She was asleep,” Steve had said as Tony looked at the older woman’s face, the way that Steve in just a few lines had captured the exhausted sag of her face, the wild spread of her hair. “Like lights out, gone. I probably should have woken her up, you know? I thought about it. What if she’d missed her stop?”

“But you drew her instead.”

“Yeah.” Those pretty cheeks colored. “Just something to pass the time.”

“You’re really good at this,” Tony’d said, still staring at the thing, captivated. “I mean, Steve, come on. This is great.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Tony tried to hand the sketch back.

“No,” Steve had said with a gorgeous, heady smile. “You should keep it.”

And damn it, he had.

It was framed and hanging in his bathroom, the private one at his place here in New York. The center of his sanctum sanctorum, something only he could see. It was, he figured, the closest thing to a touchstone, weirdly, that he’d ever had.

The little hand met the big hand. Eight o’clock.

Nothing happened.

He peered at the door, the strains of the sunset it couldn’t quite hold back.

Not a thing.

He lifted his glass to his mouth and almost let himself be happy, almost. How much time, he wondered, do I technically have to wait? Five minutes, maybe? Traffic’s a bitch tonight. Or maybe I should give him ten?

When he set his drink down, though, and looked up again, he had his answer. And, it seemed, his date. 

Oh fuck.

“Hey,” Steve the-very-same said, looking seriously, seriously freaked. “Er, Tony, wasn’t it? Long time no see.”

“Yeah,” Tony managed. Huh. So this was what it felt like to be bitch slapped by the universe. “You can fucking say that again.”


	2. Chapter 2

_There are times_ , Steve thought, staring into the face of what might have been, _when every mistake you’ve ever made becomes crystal clear_. 

Like the night before he left for basic training, when his best friend’s little brother had kissed him, wrapped his long, cool hands around Steve’s face in his parents’ backyard and laid one on him for the ages under the moon and the stars.

“What was that for?” he’d said stupidly, after, his hands somehow clutching Lo’s hips.

And Lo--a kid he’d known all his life, not a kid now; seventeen going on worldly with a soft, hurt look in his eyes. “Because I like you,” he’d said. “Because I’ve always liked you, Rogers, it’s just”--he stroked his thumb across Steve’s lips--“it’s never seemed liked the right time to say. And now there isn’t any more time, is there, so I figured why the hell not. The worst you could do would be to leave in the morning and never come back and you’ve sworn to Uncle Sam you’ll do that.”

“I’ll be back, Lo. In just a few months.”

Lo had sighed and tipped his head back, Steve’s vision suddenly filled with the strong, pale line of his neck. “Yeah, but it won’t be the same, Steve. You know it won’t be. Besides--”

Steve’s arms had slid around him. “Besides what?”

Another sigh, this one something Steve had felt in his soul. “Besides, I can’t wait around for you forever. Not anymore, you know? This is a sign, you leaving. That’s what I think. I need to get on with my life.”

_How long_? Steve had wanted to ask, his heart in a panicked flutter. _When did you know? Why the hell didn’t you say? I would have--_

Would he have, though? Hadn’t part of him always known?

The way that Lo had pestered he and Thor (technically Thomas, but that childhood nickname had stuck) when they were younger, when he and Thor were racing bikes or playing Nintendo or sneaking a beer in the basement, one stolen from Thor’s older brother’s stash--Lo had always been lurking in the shadows with his wide, ice-blue eyes, waiting, just waiting, for their acknowledgement, their attention, an invitation to participate, one that had rarely, rarely come: the bane of little brothers everywhere.

But in the last couple of years, Lo had pulled back, grown lanky and distant in his studied, disaffected way. He hadn’t chased after them anymore, hadn’t made a show of wanting to be included, but he’d still looked at Steve with what he realized now was a certain kind of hope, one whose tenor had deepened, and as he raced through life, those awkward years after high school, Steve had never taken the time to really look back.

If he had, he’d thought, holding Lo in his arms on the last night of his civilian life, things might have been very different.

“You’re thinking,” Lo said. “I can hear you.”

“Yeah.”

Lo had touched his cheek again and looked at him, all the affection gone now; only affection and something like tears left behind. “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d much rather you stopped that entirely, thank you.”

“Hmmm,” Steve had said, leaning into that shivering, overdue touch, “all right. How about I kiss you instead?”

They’d made love in the backyard, in the little shed Steve used for his painting, and that’s what stayed most vivid in his mind about that night, about his best friend’s little brother: the smell of paint on the summer breeze, the way the moon had slid in through the window and tangled itself in Lo’s long, dark hair.

“I’m sorry, Lo,” he’d whispered in between the greedy slap of their bodies. “God, I’m so--”

And Lo had kissed him and Lo had whimpered and Lo had come and there wasn’t room for apologies after that, for regrets, for anything in that moment except for the here and the now.

One night. That’s all they’d had. Because Lo was right, it wasn’t the same, after that.

“I swear to shit, Rogers,” Thor had said the first night he got back, “I hardly fucking recognize you. You should be on the Army posters, dude! You’re a new goddamn man.”

“Yeah,” Steve had said, tipping back his beer and pretending it didn’t bother him that Lo wasn’t in the shadows any longer, that he was up at college in Rhode Island and happier, Thor reported, than he’d ever damn well been. “I guess I am.”

*****

It was years before it happened again quite as clearly, before he’d walked into a moment that made him realize every turn he’d taken to get there was the wrong one. And that was the night he’d gone home with Bucky Barnes.

Buck was angry. He’d known that from the start. Angry with good reason, mind you; the war he’d been shipped off to fight in Afghanistan had taken a hell of a lot. But ten minutes in the guy’s company and it was plain as day, even to those swept in by his pretty face and dirty grin that even before the war, Barnes had been pissed off at the world all the damn time, like it was written into his DNA.

They’d met at a mutual friend’s house one Fourth of July: sparklers and steaks and too much whiskey. For Steve, a cupcake and a seriously off-key slaughter of _Happy Birthday_.

“Why the hell doesn’t it surprise me that a guy like you was born on the Fourth?”

The voice had come from behind him. Steve remembered swiveled, stared. Something in him had stuttered to a stop. Because the guy giving him shit was gorgeous, the stop dead in the street kind: tight black t-shirt and indigo jeans and a look on his face that gave the grill a run for its money.

_Jesus_ , Steve had thought at the time. _Jesus H. Fucking Christ._

“Careful,” the guy had said. He’d stepped up and cupped Steve’s hand, the one that was holding his cupcake. “Sam went to a lot of trouble buying that at Wal-Mart or some shit for you. You wouldn’t want to drop it, huh?”

His name was Bucky and he knew Sam from Kabul and he’d tasted like Pilsner and salt.

“Yeah?” he’d chuckled when Steve had said that in Sam’s tiny guest bathroom as Bucky’s fingers worked his belt and tugged firm at his zipper. “Well, give me ten minutes, cupcake, and you’ll be tasting something better than that.”

He’d taken Steve home with him, given him a helmet and stuck him on the back of his bike, and the whole way there, zipping through the loud summer air, the sky alight above them, Steve had known it was a mistake. He’d known as if he’d already lived it that whatever had brought them together that night, however good it felt now--going home with Bucky was a mistake. A blowjob at a party was one thing, but this--the bike purring beneath them, the asphalt hot beneath his feet at the red lights, the promise of something beyond just that night--was something else all together, something that felt dangerous and goddamn fucking arousing. But it didn’t feel right.

That first night, though, it sure as hell hadn’t felt _bad_.

He’d come on Bucky’s cock like a teenager, with a shout and the smell of spunk everywhere. He’d come again while Bucky lapped at his ass and cleaned up the mess his dick had left behind, stroking himself in time with Bucky’s long, languorous licks, with those guttural sounds of pleasure Bucky made that, even more than his tongue, made Steve squirm.

“That’s it,” Bucky had groaned when Steve spurted on the sheets, one last feeble gasp. “Good boy. That’s what you do best, isn’t it, cupcake? Give it up for me like that and come.”

In the morning, he’d woken up sore and painfully hard and they’d played with each other above the sheets until Bucky growled: “Steve, shit. Come on, cupcake. Stop holding out on me. Come.”

And he had, jesus had he. Over the three years they were together, no matter how bad things went, no matter how much they fought, Bucky could always overpower him with a firm squeeze of his dick or a hard slap on the ass and then, for a few minutes at least, an hour, Steve would forget what the fuck they were fighting about.

The world frustrated Bucky. Most people did, too. He wasn’t a violent man by any means, but he was the unhappiest man Steve had ever met.

And Steve, god help him, he’d loved Bucky beyond reason, practically from the first moment they met, even though those doubts in his head never faded. Somewhere, some part of him, knew that what they had together wasn’t enough.

“I love you,” he’d said to Buck at the end, shoving the words out through tears. “I love you, baby, but you hate yourself too goddamn much for this to ever really work.”

Buck’s eyes had found his, the blue burned down to ash. “Yeah,” he’d said sadly. “But I don’t hate you.”

They’d made love one last time, which had been a monumental mistake, because instead of walking away steel in his certainty, Steve had gotten into a taxi with his last suitcase with a tenderness in his heart that he’d forgotten, that the past, unhappy months had almost conspired to erase.

_I love you_ , Bucky had written in a card that arrived the following week, a harbinger of all the ones that came after. _I know I’m an asshole and a bastard and you did the right thing by leaving. You did. Weirdly, your good fucking sense just makes me love you more._

Slowly, slowly, Bucky had poured out the vinegar of his heart into Hallmarks, a hundred of them. And in time, the last rebar in Steve’s resolve had weakened, and he’d picked up a pen and written back.

A card with the skyline. _I miss you_.

Another with the moon, a scattering of stars. _I can’t help it, Buck. I’ve tried to, believe me, but I can’t. I still love you, too._

Fireworks outlined in glitter, a fervent three AM scrawl: _You’re the only person who’s ever made me feel like this._

“Dude,” Sam had said when he came into work in a serious mope. “I get that you guys had a thing, but it’s been over for like months now. You need to get over that shit.”

But it wasn’t really over, which was the precisely the problem, but he couldn’t quite tell Sam that, didn’t know how to put all the messy shit he was feeling into actual, not-for-Bucky words. So when Sam had suggested a blind date, a set-up with some guy he’d met at the gym, Steve had said yes because it was easier than explaining a no, and--

And in one night, he’d met someone that he clicked with right away at different level that just _let’s fuck_ and then, what the hey, tossed it away when the biggest bad decision of his life had rolled in and upped the ante to and idiot that he was, he’d said yes.

And now, here he was in a bar seven years later, no ring on his finger and a badly-bruised heart and here was the road not taken, Tony, Mr. What Might Have Been, gaping at him like he had a hole in his head.

_There are times_ , Steve thought, _when every mistake you’ve ever made becomes crystal clear._

What a rare thing, then, to be granted--by god, the universe, and a dating app--a second fucking chance.

“So,” he said, tugging out a stool, “ah, Tony. You think I could get a drink?”

Tony stared at him a second longer and then threw back his head and laughed, a big wild thing that made Steve’s shoulders relax and something deep in his gut say, again: _yes_.

Tony signaled for the waiter, grinning. “Hell yes, man. Let’s make it two.”


End file.
